Finite state machines, where and are all finite sets, can be described using state transition diagrams, in which nodes stand for states and arcs stand for transitions. Nodes are labeled by which output they generate and arcs are labeled by which input causes the transition.

The state machine above reads binary strings and determines the parity of the number of zeros in the given string; all inputted binary strings end in state S1 if and only if they contain an even number of zeros.